republishing inri034

this is another lost track that exists in a sort of an ill-defined alter-reality.

it came out of a jam in my basement that fall. i was feeling a little more lonely than usual. see, i was quite literally the only person in my social group that bothered doing grade 13. so, school was converted from my only real social grounding (and i was always an extremely introverted loner) into a place of isolation and alienation. i skipped a lot of classes, actually, in a desire to escape the people. looking back, i sort of regret not reaching out to the people around me a bit more; it would have helped in more than just a social context. but, in hindsight, i'm also able to understand the separation better as one of class; as much as i regret keeping myself isolated, i think i would have been better off not carrying on with school at all.

i mean, i did well. my average was over 90. but i felt hopelessly out of place. i knew i didn't belong there....that they would never accept me unless i became the kind of pretentious jerk i despised. nor did i want anything to do with them, anyways. i really hated the superior attitude that i found myself immersed within. so, i just kept my physical distance and my mouth shut, hoping the condition was temporary (it wasn't).

the flip side of this is that i was also working a part-time job in a fast-food restaurant and i hated it just as much. i didn't fit in any better there, amongst the kids with no aspirations in life except to work in order to exist.

so, i found myself stuck between worlds, not wanting anything to do with either. in both cases, though, what i found the problem was was the people. "i don't mind the job, but i'm repulsed by the staff".

what i really wanted was just to be able to lock myself in a room and never have to engage with anybody ever again. i think that i'm the only person that could have written this. it exudes my idiosyncrasies in surreal, tongue-in-cheek humour. but it's also dead serious.

"i'd rather have a book than a friend.
it's loyalty will never end,
doesn't succumb to fashion or trend,
and all the information it sends,
will never get lost along the way.
when things get as tough as they may,
it will always know exactly what to say,
'cause books don't hurt...
...or do they?"

musically, there's some fancy playing here. everything is completely live: no loops (except the drums, programmed into a 909 emulator). that guitar part is sort of tricky. and check the bass part in the breakdown.

the thing i really like about this the most, though, is the gorgeous kosmische ending section, which is built up on overlapping sixths and is just the most dreamy thing to escape into ever. dramatic ending chord care/of a day in the life.

and, indeed, this is the dramatic ending chord for inri.

written & recorded in the fall of 1999. originally released on inridiculous in december, 1999. split into it's own ep in january, 2014. remastered & finalized on sept 28, 2017. as always, please use headphones.

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1999, 2013, 2014, 2017). 

credits

released December 15, 1999

j - guitars, effects, bass, synths, sequencers, drum programming, flute, digital wave editing, vocals, production 

republishing inri031

this was initially a part of this record:
jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inrimake

...but it never really made sense to put it there. that's a remix/cover album, and this is two forgotten experiments. it makes more sense to spin it off here.

this track was meant to be a new beginning, but, instead, exists in a sort of purgatory. musically, it's radically different than anything else labeled 'inri'; thematically, it's a logical extension of inri. i really wanted this to be a fresh start, but in the end i had to leave it in the inri pile. in places it's sort of evil, in other places it's just a little too precious.

my dad swapped houses in mid 99. again. this would be a frequent annoyance over the next few years. i can date this clearly to the summer of '99 as the first thing i did in my new basement. that change of surroundings contributed to the feeling of wanting to do something different...

while it is an original track, it ended up on the covers disc for two reasons. first, the lead guitar loop that cycles through the track came out of a stoner jam session in the basement of a friend of mine. it's sort of hilarious to realize it took three years for another human being to get an influence here, even if it was a throwaway jam session. that was really just an excuse though. the real reason it was on inrimake, rather than on inridiculous, is that it fits in better with the prog theme of that disc than the noise theme of the other one.

the lyrics have been a problem since they were recorded. sex sells. shock sells. i had to psyche myself up to do it. it's all tied together, though. where was i going with this, anyways?

'99 was the summer between grades 12 and 13 ("oac"). yes, ontario had a grade 13. get your laughs in. it was actually a pre-university year. universities would take the grades from the "oac" year as the entrance requirements. we didn't do SATs or anything. most universities have something like this for "mature students"; the weirdness is in making high school kids do the extra year. a few places (like quebec) still have similar types of pre-university screening...

anyways, i'm going into the oac year and i haven't even really given the whole vocation thing a passing thought, other than to reject the idea of defining my life through the concept of labour. there were a few weeks in the summer where i had sort of decided not to go to oac at all. i was actually *excited* about escaping school, focusing on a minimum wage job and spending my free time smoking pot and writing music. i really didn't want anything more out of life than this. and, if i happened to get lucky and sell some records, even better. i was eventually talked down from this position through a process of bribery. that didn't magically construct vocational aspirations, though; i ended up overloading on oac credits for the simple reason that i didn't know what i wanted.

(i ended up grudgingly accepting entrance into a software engineering program, literally switched to cosmological physics within a few weeks, switched to math after that, then bounced around from music to english to women's studies and ...)

so, again, i'm stuck between grade 12 and 13 and really dreading what the future holds. finding a way to sell some music would be an escape from this. i concluded that, tactically, my best approach at the time would have been to focus on something sexually explicit that gains it's power from it's shock value. there's a bit of desperation underlying this.

so i wrote a sort of graphic depiction of sexual domination within a male homosexual context. see, the thing is that it isn't very convincing. it isn't very convincing because it's contrived for profit. i'm being bluntly honest about the logic that produced this track because seeing myself in the mirror like this actually had a large effect on me. once i realized what i'd created, i was completely disgusted with myself. in it's initial form, liquify was the first 3:36 of this track. it sat on my hard drive for several weeks, waiting for me to finish questioning myself - who i was, what i was doing, whether it was worth it.

i came to two conclusions.

the first was that contrived music sucks. i realized i wasn't going to get anywhere faking it, anyways. if i wanted to build an audience, the only serious approach i had was honesty.

the second was that, even if it works, being fake isn't worth it. i was rejecting the beaten path because i didn't feel i belonged on it. accepting some kind of Official Alternative Beaten Path wasn't solving anything.

so, i should just do what i want, and tell anybody that doesn't like it to fuck off.

the second part of this track flowed from that epiphany. it's a pure prog workout, discernible from 1972 solely in it's updated use of technology. probably for the first time, the notes really mean something to me, here. if you listen, you can tell.

the ending scene of the jim carrey masterpiece, the truman show, fades the track out. it's meant to document the importance of the film in helping me work through what i was working through. as of january 2014, i've mildly modified the track to fade out the truman show ending, which was just a little too cheezy & precious.

so, yeah. there's a few more inri tracks. but this is really the point where inri dies.

--

the first five minutes were initially a different track, and are split off here for the final version to document it. i didn't initially commit to this pairing; i always intended to finish the first section as a separate track. it really wasn't until 2014 that i finally decided against it.

the version that ended up on 'inrimake' was a slightly less finished mix than the version that i archived as mp3. i must have further altered the track between the time that i burned the inrimake disc (october, 1999) and the time that i saved the track to mp3 to archive (january, 2000). i didn't notice this when i edited the track in 2014. but, i've brought the newest version in for the final remix.

--

when i ran through the discography in 2014, i stopped on this track for a few days and ultimately had to admit defeat around it. i wanted to turn the vocals down, but the mix was simply too saturated to do anything about it; everything i tried had a set of unintended consequences, and it just seemed prudent to not touch it. i was able to get around these concerns for my final mix, which is dated to sept, 2017. i've also split the instrumental section off and given it the title that i used for early versions of inricycled.

recorded over the spring and summer of 1999. originally released on inrimake in october, 1999 (with an accidental phase reverse). the first section was modified further at the end of 1999. minimally altered and split into it's own ep in january, 2014. spliced further, appended to and finalized over sept, 2017. finalized on sept 28, 2017. as always, please use headphones.

this release also includes a printable jewel case insert and will also eventually include a comprehensive package of journal entries from all phases of production (1999, 2013, 2014, 2017). 

credits

released August 1, 1999

j - guitar, effects, bass, synths, piano, loops, drum programming, vocals, samples, cool edit synthesis, sequencing, digital wave editing, digital effects processing, production